GIGLIO — A criminal probe into the Costa Concordia’s doomed voyage, which ended with at least 15 dead and the cruise ship lying off the Italian coast, may be widened, a lawyer for the captain said on Monday.

The toll includes the bodies of two women, their nationalities so far unknown, found by divers on Monday.

Captain Francesco Schettino is accused of causing the accident and is under investigation for multiple manslaughter and abandoning the 450 million-euro ($590 million) ship before it was evacuated.

Schettino’s lawyer Bruno Leporatti said in a statement that evidence from his client about phone calls with the ship’s owners, Costa Cruises, at the time of the accident could lead to the investigation being widened.

He said the calls with Costa’s marine operation director had “opened further channels for investigation that could reasonably lead to an increase in the number of those under investigation.”

Third parties “could have at least contributed to creating the tragic event,” Leporatti said.

According to leaked transcripts from the investigation, Schettino has admitted steering too close to shore. Leporatti has said that while Schettino is willing to accept his share of responsibility, other factors were involved in the accident.

Investigators say he brought the ship to within 150 meters of the shore, apparently while performing a “salute” to the island. Schettino says this maneuver was common but the company says it should not be performed so close to the shore.

Costa Cruises, a unit of Carnival Corp, the world’s largest cruise ship operator, has suspended Schettino and declared itself an injured party in the case. It has said “unfortunate human error” by Schettino caused the disaster.

CLASS-ACTION

A U.S. lawyer said Monday the Costa Concordia had earlier cruised recklessly close to other islands to impress passengers.

Mitchell Proner of New York law firm Proner & Proner, which is planning to file a class-action suit in Miami on Wednesday on behalf of passengers in the disaster, said the ship owner would be a main target of the lawsuit.

“While they might be trying to indicate that the incident is the fault of this one rogue captain, we know that they’ve had some precedents going close to these islands along the Italian coast,” he said.

He said the same ship had earlier cruised dangerously close to the island of Procida in the Gulf of Naples.

“Procida set up mortars and saluted and the Concordia responded by blasting their sirens. So this is something that they have done in the past as a way of generating publicity and advertising for their company,” he said.

“It’s thrill-seeking for the passengers, but it’s reckless.”

Proner & Proner is teaming up with Italian consumer rights’ association Codacons and another New York law firm, Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, to lead the lawsuit on behalf of victims in the January 13 shipwreck, which occurred after the vessel moved too close to the shore of the island of Giglio.

Proner said they would likely file the suit on behalf of all victims on Wednesday in Miami, home base of Carnival, the giant U.S. cruise ship operator which owns Costa Cruise lines.

They would seek at least U.S.$160,000 for each of the victims.

“If they sustained injury it can be a multiple of that number. If they have a disability as a result of the incident and certainly in the cases of fatalities, we’re expecting in excess of a million euros per individual.”

He said they would also be examining whether the equipment on board the vessel designed to prevent such accidents had failed or were disengaged.

NOTIFICATION

The vice president of Carnival Corp, Howard Frank, arrived in Italy on Sunday to help oversee the situation, according to a source close to the company.

Frank and Pier Luigi Foschi, chairman and chief executive of Costa Cruises, met some of families of the victims of the tragedy on Giglio island on Sunday, the source said.

Costa Cruises has not received any notification that it is being investigated, according to a company spokesman. The company will be forthright with investigators and has full faith in the magistrature, he added.

According to transcripts of Schettino’s questioning by prosecutors leaked to Italian media, the captain said that immediately after hitting the rock he sent two of his officers to the engine room to check on the state of the vessel.

As soon as he realized the scale of the damage, he called Roberto Ferrarini, marine operations director for Costa Cruises.

“I told him: ‘I’ve got myself into a mess, there was contact with the seabed. I am telling you the truth, we passed under Giglio and there was an impact’,” Schettino said.

“I can’t remember how many times I called him in the following hour and 15 minutes. In any case, I am certain that I informed Ferrarini about everything in real time.”

Separately, Leporatti said that Schettino tested negative in hair and urine tests for drug use, but was not tested for alcohol on the night of the accident.

If the probe is broadened, it will reduce the glare of the spotlight on Schettino, who has so far been assigned almost exclusive responsibility for the disaster. His first officer Ciro Ambrosio is also under investigation.

A judge has said Schettino showed “incredible carelessness” and a “total inability to manage the successive phases of the emergency,” according to documents from a hearing.

SEARCH CONTINUES

Search operations were still under way for nearly 20 bodies missing. Navy divers blasted underwater holes in the hull of the ship to provide additional points of access. Debris floated out and was gathered by coastguard boats.

An Italian navy ship, the Galatea, which is equipped with a sophisticated undersea radar system, has been sent to the area to help search for bodies.

Reports on Sunday of the possible presence of unregistered passengers, including one Hungarian woman, raised questions about the exact number of people missing.

Costa Cruises on Monday denied the presence of stowaways. The Hungarian foreign ministry said it had no news that any of its nationals had been secretly on board, according to Italy’s civil protection agency.

Franco Gabrielli, head of Italy’s civil protection authority, said the ship was stable and there appeared to be no immediate risk that it could slide off the rock outcrop where it is caught and slip into deeper waters.

He said search operations could continue, and operations to pump some 2,400 tons of fuel from the vessel could begin while the search for bodies was still under way.

On Tuesday, a platform boat for the fuel recovery team will be positioned hear the Costa Concordia and preparatory dives will be made, according to SMIT, the Dutch company hired to salvage the fuel.

Giglio’s economy depends on tourists seeking clean beaches and clear water for snorkeling and scuba diving. Its drinking water, too, is drawn from the sea and desalinated.

UNESCO DECREE

United Nations cultural body UNESCO urged the Italian government Monday to restrict the access of cruise ships to World Heritage Site Venice in the wake of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster.

In a statement, Paris-based UNESCO said it had called on the Italian government “to restrict access of large ships to culturally and ecologically important areas, particularly Venice and its lagoon which are visited by some 300 large cruise ships a year.”

It said cruise liner traffic in Venice “is particularly damaging because of the fragile structure of the city.

“The ships cause water tides that erode the foundations of buildings. They contribute to pollution and impact the cityscape as they dwarf monuments in the heart of the city,” UNESCO said.

Amid efforts to eventually pump out hundreds of tons of fuel remaining in the ship, environmentalists have warned of an ecological catastrophe in Europe’s biggest marine sanctuary.

DISCOUNTS

on Monday, it emerged that the ship’s owner, Costa Cruises, a division of Carnival, the largest cruise ship operator in the world, is offering survivors a 30% discount off future cruises.

The move is the first obvious effort to limit the corporate damage done by the shipwreck, the result of a failed nighttime sail-by in which the ship was gashed by a rock, then beached to facilitate rescue, only to topple over on the rocks when the tide went out.

But with people still missing, and the rescue operation complicated by the question of unregistered passengers, the offer was criticized as “insulting,” by one British survivor.

The Daily Telegraph also reported that the Florida-based company had been telephoning survivors “asking if they are suffering nightmares or sleepless nights,” which are the hallmark symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.